


Strawhat Bouquet II

by printfogey



Category: One Piece
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/printfogey/pseuds/printfogey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five more ficlets that focus on different Strawhats, this time featuring Luffy, Nami, Sanji, Vivi and Brook. Irresistible adventure, fear & certainty, smooth surfaces, a vigil; and That Song. No pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Up (Luffy)

**Author's Note:**

> Notes for the whole collection: These ficlets were written at various times, ranging from well over four years ago to just the other day. Feedback very welcome, nitpicks included.
> 
> Disclaimer: The characters and situations of One Piece are owned by their creator, Eiichiro Oda. They are used here without permission for entertainment purposes only. These ficlets are not to be used for profit and should not be reposted elsewhere without the writer's consent.
> 
> Notes for chapter 1: This is set towards the end of manga volume 25 and the end of the Jaya arc. "Diamond-Guy" refers to Cricket.

It was the day they’d left the desert kingdom behind, when they’d lost Vivi and gained Robin and been awesomely saved from marines by Bon Clay. They’d managed to get away out to open sea and Robin had just turned out to be real funny. 

All of a sudden a huge big ship had tumbled down from above, full of cool things like skeletons and swords and suits of armour; and then the log pose was pointing upwards and it turned out there was an island in the sky.

An ISLAND IN THE SKY.

Wasn’t that about the coolest thing you’d ever heard of?

Oh, all right, so there were other really cool things, like the One Piece and Atlas and Hercules beetles. And stuff. But it was certainly the coolest _new_ thing he’d heard of!

How could anyone not want to go somewhere like that, more than anything?

How could anyone not be willing to risk life and limb and ship and hat and food for just a chance of getting to a sky island? Especially since he’d found the map and everything! That meant they _had_ to go, right?!

It would be **such** an awesome adventure. The dream island that the dreams of dreams dream of!!

So you yelled at Nami for a bit and she yelled right back and gave you a few lumps but eventually she figured out something you could do in order to get there, as you’d known she would. And now they were going to go south in the rebuilt Going Merry to find that Mystery Knock-Up Stream and reach the clouds, or die trying. But after all the help Diamond-Guy and the ape-guys had given them, they weren’t going to let them down it by letting themselves get smashed into tiny bits!

What was there to think about? There was nothing to think about. 

All you had to do was to haul anchor, set sail, follow the southbird, and go!!


	2. I Don't Want Anything (Nami)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nami's dreams lag behind the rest of her. Spoilers for events from manga volume 30 and 45. - Note: This has been previously posted here as its own work, but I'm reposting it in the collection all the same, as I now think I should have done from the get-go given its shortness.

“What’s more important, adventures or your life?!”

What an utterly _Luffy_ thing to say.

“Life! And then money!” 

Some of Nami’s dreams were like aftershocks; deep rumblings in her mind that weren’t heard until days or even weeks after the events had been lived through and survived. They re-enacted some particularly intense moments, only slightly abridged and distorted; closer to reality and therefore often more frightening than the true nightmares.

She had yet to have any such dreams about Enies Lobby. But on several of those remaining nights in Water 7 afterwards, as they’d waited for the log pose to set and for the new ship to be built and for Usopp to come back, it was Skypiea that she found herself back in.

The metallic tang of electricity everywhere; the smell of burned flesh, burned wood, burned soil below; the hot sunlight in the slightly alien air so high above the Blue Sea; the gleam of the giant golden ship around her, rising higher and higher; the air still vibrating from the thunder-charges and maybe even anticipating future attacks; white-hot death leaning in utterly close and all but certain should she choose to reject the mad god smirking on his throne before her.

Sweating and trembling, her body felt weak and small and terribly alive; her mind determined to take in as much as possible of these wide-awake moments, these few seconds remaining to her, for of course there was no choice really.

“My own dream of the future? Sure, I’ve got one,” she’d told the god then (and was telling him again now, in her dreams). “But if I leave with you now, I will be entirely alone. A dream of the future without companions is worthless!”

At this point, the dream would let her remember that she’d been holding Luffy’s hat at the time, and how the coarse battered straw had felt against her hand. 

“There are many things I want…and want to do! But if I have to abandon my friends for those things, to go with you…then I – I don’t want anything!” 

Knowing such a thing about yourself, knowing she’d made that choice and would do it again – that should be reassuring, shouldn’t it? And she supposed that in her waking life it was. In a way, she even felt grateful for it. She’d thought as much the first time she’d awoken with a jolt from this dream, sweating in her bed.

But as long as the dream lasted, there was nothing at all comforting about this knowledge. In fact, the very certainty of her resolve, the hardness and sharpness of it, only served to make the moment even more terrifying.

 _This is the way it ends,_ she remembered thinking to herself.

No way she could run away anymore. 

No way to avoid being brave. 

In Nami’s dream, there was a taste of something luminous and trembling and hot and sharp in her mouth; something that was not quite despair but right next to it, on its wavering border. And the air was crackling with madness and power.


	3. Footholds (Sanji)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written for the prompt "Smooth" at the challenge comm onepiece_300 on LJ, this one is a bit Sanji->Nami (as in canon) but more gen than not, I'd say.

Whenever the ship makes anchor near land, Sanji has a habit of loking at the nearby rocks. If they are sharp, craggly things that seem easy to climb, he feels relieved and reassured; if they're all smooth, he'll get just a little anxious, though he knows it's irrational and they'll be just fine.

It's no mystery to him. Back _then_ , that one tiny rock of an island had sides that were all smooth, offering not the tiniest hint of a foothold. The waters had fish in them, but as the shitty old man had said, there was no use in jumping in when there was no way to climb up.

He'd stared down into those waters for such a long, long time, seeing tantalising glimpses of seaweed, of shoals of fish passing by. But the rock was even, smooth, implacable. 

_If you jump in, you will never get out._ And somehow, despite the pain and terror of those far-too-many-days, despite all the hallucinations, he'd never quite gotten bad enough to forget that and dive in.

The _Sunny_ is a strong, hardy ship, made of Adam's wood and sandpapered smooth to perfection. But Franky made sure to put in helpful decorations, window-frames, and other tiny bits of unevenness - enough for a good climber to use, particularly after he's just dived in after his idiot captain.

*

Sanji loves the perfect, soft smoothness of a pretty woman's skin; he strives to protect all the ladies of his heart from anything that could blemish them.

And yet... sometimes, when he watches the (barely visible) scars on Nami's left hand and shoulder, there's a part of him that feels almost grateful for them. As if they were tiny footholds.

He should probably feel ashamed over that. But somehow, he can't quite bring himself to.


	4. The Sweetest Sound (Vivi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ficlet is based on pages 11-13 in manga chapter 212, (vol. 23). To be honest I felt a bit guilty over putting my own clumsy words to what I consider one of Oda’s most beautiful quiet sequences... but at least it's short!

The steady sound of raindrops on the roof continued all through the night. The full moon outside looked blurry through the wet windows, but the light still spread itself all over her friends’ sleeping figures. Perhaps tonight it was raining all over the kingdom. 

Each of them were wounded and wrapped in bandages, with deep cuts and broken bones and bruises all over. They’d been roughed up and smashed down and dried out and poisoned and utterly exhausted. 

Vivi turned her head from the window every so often, seeing how the shadows on their faces shifted as the moon gently moved through the night-time sky. The rain kept falling and her friends kept snoring and somehow the two sounds combined was the sound of victory. No, more than victory. Of peace. Of freedom.

It had been a very long day indeed. The longest she had ever been through. And now that the battle was over, there was little enough she could do. 

She stayed in the sickroom throughout the night, and the rain never stopped. It kept coming down in gentle abundance, and she watched it fall while keeping guard over her friends, knowing deep in her heart she had begun to tell them goodbye.


	5. Opening Chords (Brook)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "Anticipation" at onepiece-300, though it ran above the word limit. **NOTE:** While mainly set towards the end of Thriller Bark, there's also a brief reference to post-timeskip Brook at Sabaody as well.

He's eaten and drunk, danced and laughed in Moria's ruined castle, but now the party noise recedes in his mind as he sits down at the piano and starts to play _that song_. The fingers leap over the keys, the notes all coming down where they should.

But Mr Luffy tells him of meeting Laboon and it's too much; his playing grinds to a halt, the heart he doesn't have too flooded with emotions. The past reaches out to him and he's _there_ , lost again in those long-gone moments.

_– In his past, he's a young man at 18, ready to join his country's army; then a pirate at 36, approaching the Reverse Mountain and the Grand Line –_

He shouldn't let the song stop, but he can't go on alone. So he reaches into his skull and takes out the sound dial, letting his old crew's singing fill the air. Distantly he hears Miss Lola, Mr Luffy and others joining in. They are here in _this_ now. But he is drifting from several nows, only the beat of the song holding him together.

_– In his future, he stands on a stage before a vast audience, holding a guitar rather than a violin, ready to play them his soul music one last time –_

And the fifty years are nowhere, they're nothing; they have no place in this room, in this song. Here there are only old promises, old grief, old joy, and new life. All crowded together. No emptiness.

_– Far far away on the other side of the world, a whale is still faithfully waiting –_

He is so very happy to be alive.

The song stops, for now. He puts the sound dial back into his skull. It will remain there till the day he's fulfilled his promise.

And then there is no more waiting: he asks the request, and the captain answers. His captain, now.

And his future is ready to start happening.


End file.
